Arriving at the apartment, I wonder about the validity of Lily’s information. The complex is very nice and clean looking; it’s not somewhere you’d think would be running a trafficking racket. Most commonly, this kind of thing happens to children who are homeless, orphans, or immigrants, as they tend to slip through the cracks of society. When pimps do prey upon families like this, they tend to target those living in poverty. The complex doesn’t have the appearance of an impoverished place, looking quite well-maintained. Of course, it’s not out of the question that there is scummy activity happening here, as looks can be deceiving. All the same, it would certainly be very troubling that the traffickers are getting bold enough to march into middle-class suburbia and knock on doors. Under ordinary circumstances, the idea would be downright preposterous. It goes against all the wisdom of people who spend their lives fighting against this stuff. The nature of what’s going on here is a mystery to me. But then again, that’s why we’re here.

I serve as the ride for Nova and his sister Kat, who Nova said had been hanging around here a lot. We find Ashley, Zoe, Collin, and a dark-haired boy who must be Jason sitting on a pier over the lake with several benches. Zoe seems quite interested in getting to know her brother’s partner and is chattering with Jason as we approach. Then, she sees us and gives us a friendly wave.

“Hi Anja! Hi Nova! Hi Kat!” Zoe greets. “How have your Christmas breaks been?”

“Oh, it’s been awesome,” Nova says enthusiastically. “What about you?”

“Oh, we’ve had ups and downs,” Zoe answers. “This is my younger brother, Collin, and his boyfriend, Jason.” Jason waves at me, while Collin just sort of raises his eyebrows.

“I know you,” Collin says to me. “You’re that angry bitch from the concert.”

“Sorry about that,” I say. “I was having a really bad day.”

“Eh, whatever,” he says, shrugging. “So what is this about?”

“I’d rather wait for Kevin and Ruth to get here, so that we only have to explain everything once,” Ashley says.

“Let’s take a seat then, shall we?” I say. Nova and I sit together holding hands, and Kat sits at the front and looks around at the rest of us.

“Am I the only one here who’s not part of a couple?” Kat asks. “Damn, I need to get a boyfriend.”

“Yeah it’s like gay noah’s arc on here,” Collin comments. “We got two gays, two lesbians, two bisexuals, and now we just need two transgenders and we’re all set!”

“Should’ve invited Charlotte, then,” Kat says. “Are ‘Kevin and Ruth’ a couple too?”

“I don’t think so,” Zoe replies. “I never sensed anything going on between them. I think they’re just friends.”

“Yeah, Kat,” Collin says aggressively. “A guy and girl can be friends without fucking eachother, you know.”

“I know that!” Kat retorts back. “I’m friends with you, dickass!”

“Um… they’re just always like this,” Jason says apologetically.

Zoe leans over to Ashley and whispers something in her ear, giggling. Then, I hear a muffled voice that can only be Ted stuffed into Zoe’s backpack yell, “I can hear you. And I’ll have you know I’m a married man!”

A look of horror comes over Zoe’s face, and her, Ashley, Nova and I exchange tense looks. Collin looks around, puzzled. “What was that noise?”

“Sounded like an animal chittering,” Kat says, and the four of us immediately deflate with relief.

“Probably one of the nutria who live in the lake,” Jason says. “They can be very chatty.”

“Well, I really wish they would stay… quiet! ” Ashley says in a pointed way, raising her voice enough to make sure Ted heard her. “With all of these people around, all the noises are bound to spook someone! ”

“Nah, they’re not scary,” Jason says obliviously. “Don’t worry.”

We’re saved from the awkwardness of the moment by the arrival of Kevin and Ruth. I happen to notice Collin’s eyes following Kevin very closely as he sits down next to Zoe. Ruth takes her seat to my right.

“We’re not late, are we?” Kevin asks.

“No, you guys are fine,” I say. “Now that everyone’s here, let’s do an icebreaker, since not everyone here knows each other. I’ll start. Hi, my name is Anja Beulen, she/her. I’m a sophomore in high school who plays trombone in marching band. Some of my interests include politics, feminism, video games, and animation, and my favorite band is My Chemical Romance. Okay, who wants to go next?”

“Are we really doing this?” Ashley asks impatiently.

“I mean, she does have a point,” Jason says, shrugging. “I don’t really know any of you…”

“That’s the spirit!” I tell him encouragingly. “Why don’t you go next then?”

“Um, okay then,” Jason says shyly. “My name is Jason Ives. He/him, although I might start using they/them too…? Don’t feel pressured though. I live here. Uhhh. I’m a theater kid, I’m in eighth grade, and I like playing Pokémon Showdown.”

“YOU DO?” Nova interjects. “Bro, we need to play sometime.”

“Oh!” Jason says, blushing. “Um, sure.”

“Let him finish, Nova,” I say.

“No, no. That was basically it,” Jason says. “I’m not too interesting…”

“I’ll go next then,” Kevin says, smiling at the rest of us. “My name is Kevin Snyder. Uh, he/him. I’m a freshman in high school. I’m mostly into sports like soccer and track and field, but I am going to be starting an art class this semester. Could be fun. I like anime. I’m… Catholic? Uhh, I guess that’s it.”

“I have a question!” Kat calls outs. “Are you single?”

“Uh, at the moment, yes,” Kevin answers, looking at Kat suspiciously. “How old are you, exactly…?”

“Hey, let’s just have Kat go next!” I suggest. “Then she can answer that question as part of her… thing.”

“I’ll have you know I’m in seventh grade!” Kat says defensively. “That’s only two years away from high school! And also, I’m a choir kid, and my favorite musician is Kanye West. I love America, and I think it’s the greatest country on Earth.”

“I’d rather live in Denmark, personally,” Ruth comments. “Also, you never said your name.”

“I’m Katherine Mosely,” Kat says. “But you can call me ‘Kat’ for short. And that’s ‘Kat’ with a K, don’t forget it.”

“I’ll go next!” Zoe offers. “Hi, my name is Zoe Parker! I’m a freshman in high school, and I play both bassoon and alto saxophone in band. I love animals and the show ‘Steven Universe,’ and my favorite band is Paramore.”

“Nice,” I say approvingly. “Okay, who’s next?”

“I can go next,” Ruth says. “My name is Ruth Antúnez, she/her. My family emigrated here from Cuba when I was very young. I play the cello in orchestra. I have a passion for STEM subjects, especially environmental science. Kevin and I are childhood friends, we attend mass together and also used to both play soccer. Unfortunately I had to stop playing because my asthma and weight gain made it too difficult. I think that’s enough about me, who’s next?”

“Oh, I haven’t gone yet,” Nova says. “Hi, I’m Nova Mosely. He/him or whatever. I like playing video games. I’m a trombone player, like Anja. Oh, also Anja’s my girlfriend. And Kat is my sister. I take no responsibility for her annoyingness, though. Okay, I’m done.”

“I’ll keep mine brief as well, as we have important business to get to,” Ashley says. “I’m Ashley Davis. I play french horn, piano, and trumpet. I love music of a more artistic nature. This includes classical music. My favorite work is from the Late Romantic and Modernist periods. If I had to pick a composer, Igor Stravinsky makes excellent work. I also love all things jazz, but I have a soft spot for free jazz and the works of people like Pat Metheny. Another genre I’m interested in is the progressive rock of the 1970s…”

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“Hey, that’s not ‘keeping it brief!’” Collin interrupts. “I’m the only one who hasn’t gone yet, let me go!”

“Fine,” Ashley concedes moodily.

“Yo wassup, I’m Collin Parker. According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible. Yellow black, yellow black, yellow black, yellow black, yellow black, yellow black...oohh, black and yellow. Yeah, let’s sha-”

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” I say. Nova is laughing into his hands, and Jason is slouching into his seat, looking embarrassed. Everyone else just looks mildly confused.

“Okay guys, thank you for all taking this seriously,” I say sarcastically. “Let’s discuss why I gathered us all here today.

“About two and a half weeks ago, a tragic event happened at our high school. You may have heard of it. Everyone here who is currently going there was involved with it in some form or another. To make a long and painful story short, an English teacher at our school, Ms. Shari Truman, was revealed to be a pedophile, and…” I meet Kevin’s eyes briefly. I know he hates the attention being brought to him by the situation, so I decide to stretch the truth a little. “She attempted to molest several of us.” She did make a pretty good attempt on me way back at the start of the year, to be fair, though I didn’t know who it was at the time.

“Holy shit,” Collin says, looking white in the face.

“Yeah. Sorry for the mood whiplash, but it is important context for why we’re here. Anyways, after this happened, she felt some remorse, and confessed to what had happened. She also revealed that she had been working with conspirators, but before she could truly reveal the nature of this alliance, she got violently ill, and died soon after. While I can’t disclose how this occurred, we have reason to believe that this timing was not a coincidence.”

“Bro, what the fuck?” Kat balks.

“We received an anonymous tip that the organization she was working with may also have some connection to this apartment complex, although we have not confirmed this yet,” I continue. ”But that is why we wanted to talk to someone who lives here. We want to know of anything funny you might have seen, or anything you suspect about the place.” I look at Jason. He is staring at the floor of the deck, looking distressed and weak. I make a note to myself to be sensitive with how I broach the subject. “And just to be clear, we have not told the police about our suspicions because there is a chance that someone on the force is a mole, or has been paid off, and as such doing so would be a risk. And that’s not a conspiracy theory, as they behaved very strangely around the case with Ms. Truman, and this kind of thing has happened before. For instance, I once saw a story about a local government in Arkansas that had ties to drug cartels.”

“Okay, but here’s the problem,” Kat argues. “I get that you don’t trust the police and all, but what exactly are y’all gonna do about it if you find out some shit is going down?”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I say. “We have a plan in place.”

“There is some pretty weird shit about this place,” Collin says. “Like, okay, first day I was here. There were these annoying ass hicks who tried to beat us up. And then Jason here, he runs into his landlord, and she’s trying to blame him for it? And Jason says that she might’ve just made him move out? That’s a load of bullshit.”

“I agree with you that it’s quite unjust,” I say, “but I’m not sure how that connects to what we’re talking about.”

“I’m just saying, that lady is sus as fuck,” Collin says. “I mean, it’s fucked up beyond belief to just make people move out because you don’t like them.”

“It makes no sense from a business standpoint, either,” Ashley comments. “As the landlord, her job is to ensure that the place is livable for all its current inhabitants, and in return she is paid rent. No business ever has anything to gain from needlessly limiting their customer base.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, actually,” I respond. “Remember Ashley, if she gets one family to move out, she can just replace them with another that moves in.”

“But that’s psychotic,” Ashley argues. “Her job isn’t to make her complex into a little utopia. And if it were, she should be forcing out the ones causing the problems, not the victims.”

“But you said it yourself, Ashley,” I argue back. “All she cares about is collecting rent. Say you’re a land owner who has no interest in morality, and you’re renting out ten houses. Nine houses are bought by racist white families, and one is bought by a black family. There is a conflict between the two which can not be resolved, so you must choose between them. You have much more to gain appealing to the racists, who are 90% of your customer base. And so, the principles of capitalism reward the groups that already hold power.”

“No, I don’t agree with that,” Ashley says. “That’s backwards. If you want a business to be successful, it makes no sense to discriminate against people. In a real-world setting, there’s no way that 90% of your customers are white supremacists. You will gain much more by ensuring that people of all races, sexualities, or what have you, have access to your products. The white people aren’t affected by just sharing the same store, so why should they care? Maybe a few will, but I don’t think that the number will outweigh the number of black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, and white people who aren’t racist that you’re now doing business with.”

“Well it just depends, Ashley. On a national level, sure. That’s why most large businesses make shallow gestures towards being progressive. Although they obviously couldn’t give less of a shit about us in reality. But, you can’t tell me that in a very conservative town like this one, a business gains more customers from openly hiring gays and lesbians and such.”

“Why not? If the gays and lesbians do excellent work, it shouldn’t matter.”

I sigh, starting to grow frustrated with her. Ashley’s usually a smart person, so I don’t understand what her mental block is here.

“Hey, aren’t we getting kind of off topic here?” Collin asks.

“Oh, this always happens with these two,” Zoe says, sighing.

“Ashley, I think you have a very rose-tinted idea of how capitalism works,” Ruth comments. “Anja is correct in that the free market isn’t always as free as we’d like. When power imbalances exist, it’s most advantageous to appeal to those at the top.”

“Well, didn’t you talk once about how Cuba has a long history of horrific crimes against gay people?” Ashley retorts. “It’s not like getting rid of capitalism is going to end homophobia, the state can just continue the same policies but even worse.”

“Of course,” Ruth says, looking distinctly annoyed, “so it’s a good thing that we have options at our disposal other than ‘let businesses do whatever they want’ and ‘implement a horrific communist regime that slaughters its own citizens.’ If you want anyone to take you seriously, I’d encourage you not to use silly strawman strategies like that.”

“Oh shit!” Collin says, laughing. “That was a freaking burn!”

“Okay guys, look,” Kevin says, jumping into the conversation. “All of us here agree that businesses being allowed to discriminate against people is bad. I agree with Ashley that it is honestly just bad business practices. But also, this is why businesses need checks and balances on them, as they don’t always act rationally. Back in the 1960s, the government passed laws to prevent businesses from being able to discriminate against people based on race, and I say we should extend those same protections to the LGBT community.”

“Yeah. I support that,” I say. “It is worth noting that racial discrimination happens still in more covert ways. Still, at least making it harder to do is a win.”

“Don’t you think people aren’t still racist!” Kat asserts.

“Yeah, I support that too,” Ashley says. “I’m just tired of people blaming literally every single problem on ‘capitalism.’ It’s just a blanket way of scapegoating an abstract idea for everything and not actually looking more deeply into the issue.”

“I’m tired of you feeling like you have to defend capitalism so hard,” I counter. “It’s proven itself by now to be a clearly broken system. You even admit it when I press you about it. So what gives?”

Ashley sighs. “Never mind. It’s hard to explain. Let’s just… get back to the main issue at hand, please.”

“Wow,” Collin remarks. “This whole meeting has been a massive waste of time so far.”

“Not necessarily,” I say. “When there’s tension between the group, it’s better to just air it all out.”

“Yeah, whatever you say,” Collin replies flippantly.

“But yes… Jason, you’ve been quiet so far,” I say, turning to him. “Given that you’re the one who lives here, what do you think?”

“Well… I was thinking about it while all you guys and gals were arguing about stuff,” Jason says. “All of this stuff about queer people being discriminated against reminded me of my friend, Charlotte. She’s being forced to move out, and she says she didn’t really understand the reasons Ms. Patel, our landlord, gave. It was something about, her mom got fired from her job, and though she said she was finding a new one, Ms. Patel wanted them to just leave town, saying that someone is mad at them. I have to wonder… you see, Charlotte is trans-female. What if all that stuff she was saying was just an excuse, and she wants them out because she doesn’t want any trans kids living at the place?”

“Hey wait. Charlotte?” Nova questions. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“She said that she knows you,” Kat comments. “Didn’t you have a class with her?”

“Oh yeah!” Nova says in realization. “Yeah, that’s right. She’s the one from speech class.”

“She goes to our school?” Ashley asks. “I’m pretty sure I bumped into her at some point myself, come to think of it.”

“Well, maybe we could go talk to her, since a few of you already know her?” I suggest. “Is there anyone else at this complex we know? Might as well hear from as many people as possible.”

“Yeah, there is someone else,” Collin says. “Those kids. That boy and his sister. Remember them, Kat?”

“Yeah, I do,” Kat says. “What were their names? Charlie and Bella, right?”

“Yeah,” Collin says. “The day we met Charlotte, the Bella girl was hanging around, and…” suddenly, he stops, and his face freezes in an expression of horror.

“Collin? What’s wrong?” Zoe asks, worried.

“...And Bella said that their parents didn’t like Charlie,” Collin explains. “And that they wanted to give him a way to a woman, but then the woman died.”

The whole group is silent for a moment as we all process the meaning of this.

“No way,” Kat says. “You don’t think the woman he was being given to might’ve been… uh…”

“Ms. Truman,” Nova finishes for her.

“Well… disturbing as the idea is, it’s a possibility worth investigating,” I say. “I’ll tell you what. We have enough people here so that we can pursue both leads at once.”

“Kat, Collin and I should go talk to Charlie,” Jason says. “He’ll recognize us, and he might be scared if a big crowd of people approach him.”

“At least one of us should go with you, you know, just in case,” I say.

“I’ll go,” Zoe offers. “I was always good with the children at church.” Of course, everyone else in the group understands that if Zoe goes with them, Ted is as well. Sending two in one with them is pretty smart.

“Alright, that sounds like a good idea,” I agree. “Nova and Ashley can come with me and talk to Charlotte, since you already know her.”

“Ruth and I can go talk to Charlotte too,” Kevin says. “Like Jason said, we probably don’t want to scare the children by going as a huge crowd.”

“Sounds like we all have our assignments, then,” I state. “Let’s make sure to stay in touch continuously. Keep your eyes on the group chat. Okay, break! Let’s go, team!”